Problem Solving

So when we left off in terms of new discovery, I was unraveling the mysteries of my Black Canadian heritage. When I said I was taking a break from them, I ended up taking a break from genealogy in general. I've slugged my way through some adulthood complications, and I've decided to continue plugging away at these same families.

I may not be able to take the lines back into the records of their native countries, but I can fill in the gaps I still have missing. And many of them center around the men in these families. So I want to take the time to revisit all of the documentation I've already found, establish what I know about these families, and make some specific research questions so I can decide what I need to find and where to look next.

Charles Pinheiro is definitely the patriarch and staple of this family. It's only from knowing about him that I've been able to find as much information as I have. He's always attached to anything significant that happens to his descendants. The important events in this family either occur in his house, or his signature is attached--as was the case when his grandson Lester died at 12, or his granddaughter Muriel was married. Even after his only daughter, Ethel May Pinheiro, married Lester Ince--they still lived in her father's house as a large extended family.

According to the records, Charles is originally from Barbados and he entered Canada some time in or around 1875. Lester Ince is from Barbados as well, entering Canada in 1900. They both work for the railroad, Charles for IRC, or Intercolonial Railway. Lester works for CPR, or Canadian Pacific Railway. I'm instantly beginning to wonder if their ability to immigrate across the globe was related to their jobs. Did either of these railroads have shipping sectors in their business that would have picked these men up in Barbados and brought them to Canada?

They were members of the Church of England, and it appears that Ethel and Lester were married in an Anglican Church somewhere in Halifax. Where was that church? What does that mean in terms of their personal beliefs and lifestyle?

Between 1911 and 1921, something happens to Lester Ince and he is no longer a part of the picture. Ethel's last child, William Ince, was born in 1916. So some time between 1916 and 1921, Lester Ince either died, left, or was simply away from home when the 1921 census was taken in Halifax. But I have my questions about what was going on in this relationship--because when you look at the 1921 census, Ethel's marital statue was written over. This census taker appears to have done this more than once on this page, so it may be irrelevant. But the question remains of where Lester was and what happened to him. If he died, where was he buried?

These documents have quite a few addresses on them, which I need to compile and explore as best I can. The numbers on the streets have changed drastically, but if I can find a decent historical map of Halifax, I should be able to figure out where things were.

54 Garrish Lane--Charles' home

174 Gottingen Street--Charles' home at time of Rose's death

80 Oxford Street--the address attached to Muriel's marriage license, appears to be the address of the Church. What church is it?

Charles outlives his wife and seems to disappear off of the record. Is he buried in Camp Hill cemetery like the other members of his family? What happened to him? Where did he die?

These are just a few of the questions I was able to come up with after looking at the records again. I barely got these questions down before I started finding the answers to them. Sometimes the information is just waiting for us to find it, and we can barely keep up with it once we do.

Everything we know always merits a second look. And overwhelming majority of the time, what we need to keep moving forward is buried somewhere in what we already know.